French and British artists in London: Two exhibitions Tate Britain

In May 1871 Paris was in shock. A year earlier, France made the mistake of declaring war on Prussia. In six weeks, each side had lost 100,000 men and Napoleon III was deposed, after which Paris suffered three months of siege and the Paris Commune had been born, only to be crushed by the French government with 20,000 people dead and many public buildings and monuments destroyed.

Photographs and paintings of Paris in ruins and of dead patriots introduce Tate Britain’s exhibition ’Impressionists in London’ showing work by several French impressionist artists, many of whom had lost their homes, studios and livelihood in the fighting, who fled Paris for London including Charles-Francois Daubigny, Camille Pissaro, Alfred Sisley, James Tissot, Alphonse Legros and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

The second half of the exhibition examines how these and other artists portrayed London, including Monet, who took rooms in the Savoy hotel to paint his series of works of the Thames, and Andre Derain.

Taking a similar London theme, but turning to British artists, ‘All too Human’ explores a century of British art where London has formed the backdrop (in the main as the location where the artists lived and had their studios) as artists explored in different ways the complexities and contradictions of being human and of living in London, including work by David Bomberg, Walter Richard Sickert, Francis Bacon, Francis Newton Souza, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Lucian Freud, Paula Rego and Jenny Saville. In some ways, the more interesting of the two exhibitions.

The extension to Tate Britain at its northwest corner, now over 50 years old, was remarkably radical when it was built, a complete contrast to the older traditional neoclassical galleries, but it shows the success of the design in an exhibition such this with the controlled daylighting, flexible partitions and tall volumes enabling large works and triptychs such as those by Paula Rego and Francis Bacon not to feel squeezed as they would in the lower floor galleries downstairs.

Ian Caldwell

"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place

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